Fabulation

{{Short description|Genre of primarily 20th-century novelistic fiction similar in style to magic realism}} {{For|the Lynn Nottage play|Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine}}

'''Fabulation''' is a style or genre of fiction that is influenced by magic realism, but does not fit into the traditional categories of realism or (novelistic) romance. Fabulating authors include Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Donald Barthelme, William H. Gass, Robert Coover, and Ishmael Reed.<ref name="Abrams" /> The term was popularized by Robert Scholes, in his work ''The Fabulators'' (1967). As M. H. Abrams wrote, {{Blockquote|text=[Such novels] violate, in various ways, standard novelistic expectations by drastic—and sometimes highly effective—experiments with subject matter, form, style, temporal sequence, and fusions of the everyday, the fantastic, the mythical, and the nightmarish, in renderings that blur traditional distinctions between what is serious or trivial, horrible or ludicrous, tragic or comic.<ref name="Abrams">{{cite book |last=Abrams |first=M. H. |author-link=M. H. Abrams |year=2005 |title=A Glossary of Literary Terms |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_2901413002187/page/204/mode/1up |url-access=limited |others=With contributions by Geoffrey Galt Harpham |edition=8th |location=Boston, MA |publisher=Thomson/Wadsworth |page=204 |isbn=1-4130-0218-8 |access-date=7 February 2023}}</ref>}}

==References== {{reflist}}

==Further reading== *{{cite book |last=Scholes |first=Robert |author-link=Robert Scholes |year=1967 |title=The Fabulators |url=https://archive.org/details/fabulators0000scho |url-access=limited |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |lccn=67025465}} Also expanded upon in {{cite book |last=Scholes |first=Robert |year=1979 |title=Fabulation and Metafiction |url=https://archive.org/details/fabulationmetafi0000robe |url-access=limited |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=0-252-00704-2}} *{{cite book |last=Mellard |first=James M. |year=1980 |title=The Exploded Form: The Modernist Novel in America |location=Urbana |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=0-252-00801-4}} *{{cite book |last1=Bordeleau |first1=Érik |last2=Pape |first2=Toni |last3=Rose-Antoinette |first3=Ronald |last4=Szymanski |first4=Adam |year=2017 |title=Nocturnal Fabulations: Ecology, Vitality and Opacity in the Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul |url=https://openhumanitiespress.org/books/download/Bordeleau--Pape--Rose-Antoinette--Szymanski_2017_Nocturnal-Fabulations.pdf |location=London |publisher=Open Humanities Press |isbn=978-1-78542-040-5}}

Category:Fiction by genre Category:Literary criticism